Information Technology Ethics
Ethics- s in the broadest sense refers to the concern
that humans have always had for figuring out how best to live. The philosopher
Socrates is quoted as saying in 399 B.C. that “the most important thing is not
life, but the good life. We would all like to avoid a bad life, one that is
shameful and sad, fundamentally lacking in worthy achievements, unredeemed by
love, kindness, beauty, friendship, courage, honor, joy, or grace.
Now the question is how to have a good life? This is the
question that the study of ethics attempts to answer.
Keywords:
the question is
how the technology will affect the ethics and why it’s important to know about
it.
There is a growing international consensus that ethics is of
increasing importance to education in technical fields, and that it must become
part of the language that technologists are comfortable using. Today, the
world’s largest technical professional organization, IEEE (the Institute for
Electrical and Electronics Engineers), has an entire division devoted just to
technology ethics. 2 In 2014 IEEE began holding its own international
conferences on ethics in engineering, science, and technology practice. To
supplement its overarching professional code of ethics, IEEE is also working on
new ethical standards in emerging areas such as AI, robotics, and data
management. What is driving this growing focus on technology ethics? What is
the reasoning behind it? The basic rationale is really quite simple. Technology
increasingly shapes how human beings seek the good life, and with what degree
of success. Well-designed and well-used technologies can make it easier for
people to live well (for example, by allowing more efficient use and
distribution of essential resources for a good life, such as food, water,
energy, or medical care). Poorly designed or misused technologies can make it
harder to live well (for example, by 1 Plato, Crito 48b. 2 https://techethics.ieee.org
An Introduction to Cybersecurity Ethics MODULE AUTHOR: 3 toxifying our
environment, or by reinforcing unsafe, unhealthy or antisocial habits).
Technologies are not ethically ‘neutral’, for they reflect the values that we
‘bake in’ to them with our design choices, as well as the values which guide
our distribution and use of them. Technologies both reveal and shape what
humans value, what we think is ‘good’ in life and worth seeking.
References
Online Resources (see also Appendix A)
ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology).
ACM/IEEE-Computer Society. Software Engineering Code of
Ethics and Professional
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